Sunday, November 16, 2008
Movie Reviews: QUANTUM OF SOLACE
IN THEATERS
QUANTUM OF SOLACE
Following the betrayal and death of Vesper Lynd, James Bond (Daniel Craig) makes his next mission personal. The hunt for those who blackmailed his lover leads Bond to ruthless businessman Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric), a key player in the organization which coerced Vesper. Bond learns that Greene is plotting to gain total control of a vital natural resource, and must navigate a minefield of danger and treachery to foil Greene's plan.
Cast: Daniel Craig, Olga Kurylenko, Mathieu Amalric, Judi Dench, Giancarlo
Giannini
Director: Marc Forster
Opened: November 14, 2008
Runtime: 1 hr. 46 min.
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, and some sexual
content
Genres: Action Thriller, Spy Film, Action, Glamorized Spy Film
Review:
The easiest way for me to describe Mark Forster's Quantum of
Solace is like so; 4-5 minutes of exposition followed by big elemental action set piece, another 4-5 minutes of exposition followed by another big elemental action set piece, repeat throughout. Is Quantum of Solace a terrible film? Not really but it's utterly forgettable in comparison to Martin Campbell's wonderful reboot of the Bond Franchise Casino Royale which brought back non fans like me to the franchise. Mark Forster's (Monster's Ball) first foray into big budget, this film is reported to have had the largest budget ever of any Bond film, action films feels instantly derivate of the Bourne franchise. The action is quickly edited with makes it somewhat difficult to keep up from time to time. The action set pieces as a whole are impressive, using various locals and elemental themes, but they lack any resonance and are likely to forgotten by the time you walk out of the film. It doesn't help that a few of them begin to verge on silliness which turned me off the franchise in the first place; mid air sequence I'm looking right at you. The action comes fast and furious but it comes off as pointless mainly due to the thread bare script. The script gives us very little outside of passing references to Casino Royale as motivation for Bond. While Bond was more textured in Royale but here he's overly single minded. Daniel Craig does the best he can with what he's given. Craig is solid again in the main role and brings a steely resoluteness to the character even if the character is written more as the "blunt object" here. Olga Kurylenko is this entry's Bond girl and she doesn't match Eva Greene's performance or character from the previous entry. First off, she and Craig have zero chemistry together on screen and even worse her character is boring, she's out for revenge too. Mathieu Amalric the fine French actor is wasted here and isn't asked to do much more than bug his eyes out to remind us his character is sinister. The smaller supporting roles are some bright spots as Giancarlo Giannini and Jeffery Wright and make you wish they had some more screen time. Quick frenzied and somewhat incoherent Quantum of Solace starts off the holiday movie season on a disappointing note.
C
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